Re: What is the real relationship between the Testamonium and the stories of Paulina and Fulvia?
Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:43 am
Yes, broadly speaking that's it. As a caveat, I'm not proposing the theory that no one before the 17th century ever saw the Paulina story in the Antiquities as referring to Jesus and seeking to prove it. I don't know what everyone who heard or read the text of Ant. 18 thought. I'm pointing out that your claim that there were writers since even the early centuries AD that were convinced that Josephus was alluding to Jesus in the Paulina story is not supported by any direct evidence.rakovsky wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:59 am Ken,
I think that you are suggesting that the coincidences between Jesus' and Paul's stories and the stories of Paulina and Fulvia are just that - coincidences and not real allusions. You are also suggesting that before the 17th century, earlier writers didn't perceive the story of Paulina to refer to Jesus. As such, you suggest that when a hypothetical Christian interpolator added in the Testaimonium into Josephus' story, he didn't place it next to the Paulina story because he believed that it alluded to Jesus (as Kautsky suggested that the alleged interpolator did). And when the Christian writer Pseudo-Hegesippus rewrote the Paulina story in a pro-Christian way and added in virgin birth elements, he didn't believe that the Paulina story itself alluded to Jesus, nor did the Sepher Yosippon when it used the Paulina story as an anti-Christian polemic. Further, you seem to suggest that no writers until the 17th century saw the Paulina story as deliberately alluding to Jesus.
I have a theory on the origins of the Testimonium, but in this thread I've been trying to stick to evaluating your arguments rather than trying to push my scenario. So I'll give a qualified yes: we have no good reason to suppose that whoever placed the Testimonium where he or she did in the text of Antiquities 18 was driven by its similarities to the Paulina story.In your scenario, did the interpolator who drafted the Testimonium put it next to Paulina's story because he saw similarities in it to Jesus' story, or were the similarities and the location of the two sections next to each other purely coincidental?
We don't know what the author of Sefer Yosippon would have thought about the Paulina story in Josephus' Antiquities because he never read it (do I need to state the more cautious 'we have no evidence that he read it''?). He knew the form of the story in Pseduo-Hegesippus. Flusser think he did not have access to the Antiquities in Greek, and he lacked the last four books in the Latin translation he used. I'll get back to the rest of this question below.Why should both Pseudo-Hegessipus and the author of the Sepher Yosippon have taken the effort to turn a negative story that they, in such a hypothetical, wouldn't have seen as about Jesus, into a Jesus-themed, positive, pro-Christian themed story?
It seems more likely to me that the coincidences between the TF and Paulina story are numerous enough that they are intentional and that even if they are not.
Even if they are not ... what? I think part of your post got lopped off here. And the similarities between the Testimonium and the Paulina story are not numerous or strong. Most of the similarities you've given were between the Paulina story and the Christian tradition, not the Testimonium. The actual similarities between Paulina and the Testimonium, that someone met someone else three days after something happened, and one or more people were crucified, are not enough to establish much of anything.
Now you're supporting your interpretation of the Paulina text from the Antiquities with writers whose existence you have deduced? You might not see the problem there, but I'm willing to bet other people will.Also, there were writers and readers before the 17th c. who perceived them to be deliberate,
This is another problem with your presentation of your theory. You take a possibility and present it as *the* explanation when it's only *a* possible explanation that attracts you. It's possible that Peudo-Hegesippus understood Josephus to be alluding to Jesus in the Paulina story, but he doesn't say he did, and you haven't shown that he did. It's possible he added the element of Paulina's possible pregnancy as an allusion to Jesus without thinking Josephus version of the story alluded to Jesus. Then again, it's possible that he did not intend the pregnancy bit as an allusion to Jesus. The author of the Sefer Yosippon gave a form of the story, which he took from Pseudo-Hegesippus, that definitely alluded to Jesus [EDIT: now that I've actually seen a translation of the passage I would say ostensibly rather than definitely], but whether he took Pseudo-Hegesippus to be alluding to Jesus or added it on his own, we don't know. What we do know is that he took a lot of material from Christian Pseudo-Hegesippus anti-Jewish history and turned it into a pro-Jewish history, so his creative powers in adapting his source were high. I don't know at what point the story became about Jesus. And I don't think you know either.and that this explains why Pseudo-Hegesippus and the Sepher-Yosippon used Paulina's story as Christian or anti-Christian allegories and polemics.
I'm unable to follow your train of thought here. Is Josephus' version of the Paulina story the negative anti-Christian allegory? I thought you thought Josephus was pro-Christian. And are you attributing to me the idea that the Paulina story is a negative allegory? I don't think it's an allegory.I think that it's more likely that a Christian Pseudo-Hegesippus gave a positive, pro-Christian reworking to a negative, anti-Christian allegory than giving a pro-Christian reworking to a negative allegory that he considered to only deride pagan gods.